Free Before We Visit the Goddess by Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni Page A

supplies. We know he’s going down to La Cariba, where he will get happily intoxicated, but we’re careful to pretend ignorance. We understand the rituals of subterfuge.
    Keysha pops her purple bubblegum and says, “Don’t you worry, Mr. Lawry. We be just fine.”
    With Mr. Lawry’s departure, an air of truant hilarity settles on Nearly. Blanca and I eat pakoras and read the classified ads from the Indo-Houston Mirror out loud to each other. Keysha, who’s getting married soon, uses the store phone to call her mother in Amarillo to discuss bridesmaid gowns. (“Ecru? Mama, you serious? We going for hot pink.” She punctuates her sentences with a flurry of jingles from the bells woven into her braids. “Uh-uh. No bows. Definitely no bows.”)
    â€œ Sister Shireen, god-gifted problem solver ,” Blanca reads. “ Will remove curses, reunite loved ones, heal marriage and business. ”
    I read, “ Parents looking for match for fair-skinned homely Punjabi lady doctor . Must have green card. Prefer 5 ' 8 '' but 5 ' 4 '' ok.”
    Then Blanca says, “Dios, Tara, look at this one. Family requires respectable Indian woman with car to take care of Mother over long weekend. That’s what you and Robert need, a bit of distance-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder.”
    â€œYou want me to babysit an old woman all weekend?”
    â€œNot just any old woman. An old Indian woman. It’ll be like staying with your abuela.” Blanca knows that my grandmother died about three years ago, right around when I left school. I never met her. When I was younger, I used to ask my mother about her all the time, but she’d mostly change the subject, until finally I gave up. I don’t think about her much nowadays. I have other problems. But Blanca’s obsessed with my lack of family and always trying to remedy the situation. “Maybe she’ll teach you how to cook some proper Indian food. El Roberto might fancy that.”
    This reminds me of my discussion with Robert this morning, the one that ended in me walking out of the apartment. I didn’t slam the door, but only because I am not that kind of person.
    â€œOh, very well,” I say.

    I’m late for my interview, having been lost twice since I got off the freeway. The geometric houses, the look-alike pruned bushes, the subdivision names—Austin Colony, Austin Glen, Austin Crossing—make me feel like I’m in some kind of suburban funhouse. Really, I should feel right at home, having grown up in the suburbs myself, but I am no longer that girl.
    Finally I park my beat-up VW next to a Camry that stands, docile and squeaky-clean, in the Mehta driveway. I am attired in clothes that Blanca culled with care from Nearly’s stock: shapelessly loose slacks (“You don’t want to show no legs, trust me, legs get employers all worked up”) and a deep pink top with puffy sleeves to cover my scorpion tattoo. I hear the disembodied laughter of the gods: Who’s the fuchsia hippo now?
    Mr. Mehta opens the door: neat side part, navy blue pants, shirt buttoned to his neck, brown leather sandals, kind of Stepford-husband-meets-Walmart. He’s about five-foot-four. I feel like I’ve stepped into the wrong ad.
    â€œIt’s six twenty-five.” He jabs at his watch. “Your interview was at six.” His eye falls on the silver ring inserted into my left eyebrow, which I refused to let Blanca remove, and his mouth puckers.
    â€œFor heaven’s sake!” a female voice clangs from the room beyond. “It’s not like you have ten other candidates lined up.”
    Heartened by my invisible champion, I lie my way through the interview conducted by Mr. Mehta and his wife, a surprisingly glamorous woman several inches taller than him, her hourglass figure draped in a chiffon salwar kameez. No, I don’t drink. No, I don’t do drugs. I’ve never had an encounter with